The art of living 'in country'

October 20, 2003 — 10.00am

The Yunupingu view that non-indigenous Australians should come to Aboriginal-controlled land as a way to understand better indigenous ways of life, is shared by many from the homelands - and some from the city.

"I say, look at the world wisely, not narrow, with respect. Listen to Yolngu people, black people - we have one world, one spirit." He then invited me to come to Dhuruputjpi, the tiny homeland base 200km south of Yirrkala, deep in the east Arnhem Land bush, where he and Galuma live. It is there that Galuma gets her best inspiration.

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Like many homelands, the only way in is by air or on foot, there are no services whatever, the 40 or so residents live mostly on bush tucker and have only a satellite telephone to request emergency help. To visit is both expensive and difficult and for Galuma and Dhukal, who travel widely in pursuit of her artistic career, going to and from is no less problematic.

Yet their remoteness at home lends both strength and integrity to Galuma's paintings, one of which took out this year's Telstra national Aboriginal art award in the bark painting category.

Her work style and clan stories, handed down by her father, the now deceased master Narritjin Maymuru, is celebrated internationally and held by major institutions in the United States and at the National Gallery, Canberra.

There are many undisclosed aspects to her bark paintings that give them a mystical power. And they are commercially popular, giving Galuma a respectable income.

She is assisted in her work by Will Stubbs, the current co-ordinator of Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, the community-owned art centre at Yirrkala. Will fell in love with Arnhem Land and its people by degrees but he was heading bush from the word go.

"My dad (respected former Brisbane journalist John Stubbs) grew up in Cunnamulla," Will says. "He traded blows with Herb Wharton, the Aboriginal writer, on the sand dunes back in the bad old days of the black-white conflict." Wharton is staying at Stubbs' home settlement of Yirrkala as we speak.

A former Sydney-based criminal lawyer, Stubbs jnr "burnt his suit" in 1991 and went on the road to he didn't know where. He ended up in Darwin, as you do, and worked for Aboriginal legal aid for four years.

He started appearing as defence counsel at an informal "circle court" in Yirrkala where he met schoolteacher and clan elder Merrki Ganambarr. They married in 1994 but Stubbs says his love affair had nothing directly to do with his growing affection for Aborigines and their ways.

"When I was a kid, holidays were heading off down a watercourse with a tent," Will says, describing his nascent love of the bush. "When I first heard Aboriginal language spoken my heart rate went through the roof. I wanted to follow them down the street to hear more. But it was coincidental, the deep and abiding love of land in my nature and the incipient attraction to this woman and her land.

"This chick 'sung' me and it had resonance with my other interests. But the two were unconnected. She could have been Hungarian and I would be eating goulash now."

Will says he tried to get court hearings shifted permanently to Yirrkala because it is so beautiful. Now, after nine years of marriage to Merrki and eight years as the Buku Larrnggay Mulka art centre co-ordinator, he is conversant in Yolngu language and has been party to secret customs. He knows well the benefits of acquiring Aboriginal knowledge "in country" where the balanda visitor is forced to take things at Yolgnu pace.

He points out that each of his predecessors spent similar amounts of time in the job, unusual in a modern, shifting employment scene. "The back story is the continuous support the artists get, nearly 30 years with three co-ordinators, which is unheard of in the art world."

Now the father of an 18 month-old daughter, he might hit the road again when he and Merrki take long service leave - but they'll always stay close to Yirrkala, with its lobster red rock, pandanus palms and beautiful sandy beaches.

In every sense Stubbs is wedded to Arnhem Land. But nothing is forever in a western working life.

"My wife's ceremonial duties are such that if we moved away she would have to come back every time there was a major ceremony. Maybe there'll be a time when the (arts) centre needs new blood. I'd hope I would recognise it and step aside."